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Alex Smith is taking sacks at a near-record pace

Alex Smith, Geno Atkins

AP

Chiefs quarterback Alex Smith has been sacked 18 times this year, meaning he’s on pace to get his name in the record books, and not in a way he’d want.

Smith is currently on pace to get sacked 72 times this season. That’s a pace that only one quarterback in NFL history has topped.

The NFL Record and Fact Book lists this as the record under “Most Times Sacked, Season":

76: David Carr, Houston, 2002
72: Randall Cunningham, Philadelphia, 1986
68: David Carr, Houston, 2005

Times sacked has been kept as an official statistic since 1963, and Smith is on pace to get sacked at a rate matched only by David Carr when playing behind one of the worst lines in NFL history with the expansion Texans, and Randall Cunningham in his first year as a starter, when the Eagles’ offense featured Cunningham constantly scrambling and often getting caught behind the line. That’s not good company to keep.

Smith was sacked a career-high 45 times last year, but if the Chiefs can’t change things, he’s going to obliterate that mark this year. Or else he’s going to get obliterated.